Cast your mind back to when Sony released the original PlayStation 3, and you may well remember claims that the console was also a "computer". The claims were such that Sony suggested that owners could install Linux -- which, technically speaking, they could.

However, installing Linux on a PS3 also posed something of a security issue, and Sony backtracked on the "Other OS" feature, killing it will a firmware update. Unsurprisingly, a lawsuit followed, and the result of this is that you could in line for a pay-out.

While listing out the best distros for a Linux beginner, the ease of use and installation are the most critical factors. Such qualities make distros like Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and Zorin OS the most recommended options. In case you’re also concerned about your privacy and security, a shift to the world of Linux becomes a more obvious option.

Calling itself a replacement for Windows and macOS, Zorin OS has been established as a beginner-friendly option that offers a smooth ride while making the transition. The latest Zorin OS 12.3 release works to strengthen the basics of the operating system and polishes the whole experience.

I had originally run MCC (Manchester Computer Center Interim Linux) in college but when I moved it was easier to find a box of floppies with SLS so I had installed that on the 486. I would then download software source code from the internet and rebuild it for my own use using all the extra flags I could find in GCC to make my 20Mhz system seem faster. I instead learned that most of the options didn't do anything on i386 Linux at the time and most of my reports about it were probably met by eye-rolls with the people at Cygnus. My supposed goal was to try and set up a MUD so I could code up a text based virtual reality. Or to get a war game called Conquer working on Linux. Or maybe get xTrek working on my system. [I think I mostly was trying to become a game developer by just building stuff versus actually coding stuff. I cave-man debugged a lot of things using stuff I had learned in FORTRAN but it wasn't actually making new things.]

Wallpapers are useful in many ways depending on the visual it contains for example if there is a motivational quote on it, it helps to motivate you. The images are the best type of wallpaper because they have an impact on the mind of a human being. So if you are a working professional and have to work continuously on a computer then your desktop cab be a source of inspiration and happiness.

So today we are going to share 50 best HD Wallpapers for your Ubuntu which will keep your desktop fresh.

GNOME developers previously dropped support for Synaptics and other input drivers from Mutter in favor of the universal libinput stack that is also Wayland-friendly. Canonical developers tried to get Synaptics support on X11 added back into Mutter but it looks clear now that was rejected.

Canonical's Will Cooke reported in this week's Ubuntu happenings that they were trying to add upstream support for Synaptics to Mutter, complementing the libinput support. While it's great Canonical trying to contribute upstream to GNOME, Synaptics support was previously dropped as being a maintenance burden and with libinput support getting into rather good shape.

y involvement in Fedora goes back to late 2003 early 2004 somewhere as a packager for fedora.us. I started by getting a few packages in to scratch some of my itches and I saw it as a way to give back to the greater open source community. Around FC3 somewhere I stepped up to help in infrastructure to rebuild the builders in plague, the build system we used before koji and that we used for EPEL(Something that I helped form) for awhile until we got external repo support in koji.

I was involved in the implementation of koji in Fedora, I joined OLPC as a build and release engineer, where I oversaw a move of the OS they shipped from FC6 to F8, and laid a foundation for the move to F9. I left OLPC when Red Hat opensourced RHN Satellite as “spacewalk project” I joined Red Hat as the release engineer for both, after a brief period there was some reorganisation in engineering that resulted in me handing off the release engineering tasks to someone closer the the engineers working on the code. As a result I worked on Fedora full time helping Jesse Keating. When he decided to work on the internal migration from CVS to git I took over as the lead.

[...]

Recently I have accepted a Job offer to become the manager of a different team inside of Red Hat.

Longtime Linux kernel developer Arnd Bergmann is working to drop a number of old and obsolete CPU architectures from the next kernel cycle, Linux 4.17.

The obsolete CPU architectures set to be removed include Blackfin, CRIS, FR-V, M32R, MN10300, META (Metag), and TILE. Managing to escape its death sentence is the Unicore32 architecture with its port maintainer claiming it's still actively being used and maintained.

Interviewer: we all know who Linus is, but not many people know he’s also a proficient diver. Why don’t we start at the beginning: where you first started diving, and when you started to take diving seriously.

The past 7 days have been pretty dang busy in Linux release land. We’ve taken a look at the best GNOME 3.28 features, recapped the latest Firefox 59 changes, and made ourselves comfortable with the latest changes to Linux audiobook player Cozy.

Per a CRAN email sent to 300+ maintainers, this package (just like many others) was asked to please register its S3 method. So we did, and also overhauled a few other packagaging standards which changed since the last upload in 2014.

The first point release to the Vulkan 1.1 release from earlier this month is now available. Vulkan 1.1 promoted a lot of functionality to core while also officially adding sub-groups and protected content support. This Vulkan 1.1.71 point release adds a new extension and fixes.

This first point release to Vulkan 1.1 is officially version 1.1.71. This is because when Vulkan 1.1 was created, Khronos decided not to reset the patch number... Vulkan 1.1 was technically 1.1.70 and not 1.1.0. So now with this first update it's bumped to Vulkan 1.1.71.

Google this week announced that it will open its Maps APIs to video game developers, which could result in far more realistic settings in augmented reality games. With access to real-time map updates and rich location data, developers will have many choices of settings for their games.

The APIs will provide devs with what Google has described as a "living model of the world" to use as a foundation for game worlds. Developers will have access to more than 100 million 3D buildings, roads, landmarks and parks from more than 200 countries around the globe.

According to the poll, which took in the views of more than 100,000 devs, Rust is the most loved programming language for the third year running. It is closely followed by Kotlin, which makes its debut in the survey.

[...]

At the other end of the spectrum is Visual Basic 6, which has been voted most dreaded programming language. Visual Basic 6 is also linked to lower pay, with Stack Overflow saying that devs using it are “paid less even given years of experience”.

The latest feature addition to the GCC compiler this week is support for Intel's new "ENCLV".

ENCLV is a new intrinsic that is part of the Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX). The Enclave happens to be a trusted execution environment embedded into a process with isolated memory regions of code.data. Enclaves are protected areas of execution and the ENCLV instruction is needed to put application code into that special mode.

The HAMMER2 file-system has been available with install-time support since DragonFlyBSD 5.0 while the latest Git code continues to revise this next-generation FS for DragonFly. Landing overnight in DragonFlyBSD were several HAMMER and HAMMER2 improvements.

In summary, gsplit's default file naming behavior is to add a letter to the prefix and suffix of a filename whenever it reaches 26^r - 26 files (with r being the current length of the suffix), so you don't need to worry about running out of filenames (just disk space, haha).

Federal prosecutors call it a “naming and shaming” strategy against hackers working for adversary nations, but former U.S. cyber spies worry they will be the ones ending up in a foreign prison.

Repeatedly in recent years, U.S. prosecutors have filed criminal charges against hackers working for foreign governments, saying that even if the hackers never get hauled into a U.S. courtroom, the indictments serve as a warning shot across the bow of nations like China, Iran and Russia.

The spectre and meldown security vulnerabilities have woken up the industry to potential security flaws in hardware that can be exploited to compromise the integrity of the native computer security role based authentication.

Now a new report has indicated potential vulnerabilities on AMD, but Linus Torvalds has jumped into this discussion and shot down this report is not technically sound.

The experts cautioned that pacemakers or wearable health monitors which are linked up to the [I]nternet or internal computer networks could also provide a gateway for [crackers] to plant ransomware into systems, potentially crippling in the NHS or government departments.

Writing about taste, style and colors is like unraveling chaos. There's no end to it, and everyone has their own particular taste. Flat and shiny icons seem to be quite popular nowadays, but I'm actually looking for something calmer, less conspicuous, and perhaps less eye-wearing. You want to see things when you need to focus. The rest of the time, the desktop elements should be a neutral background. Nothing speaks neutral like gray.

Over the years, I've tested and tried a lot of available art packages. I won't backlink to all of them, please peruse the software section at your own delight and peril. I've never quite found what I needed, until recently. ACYLS and Ghost Flat are good candidates but Numix White seems to offer the best overall results, except this set might be hard to come by, and we're cheating color wise. Well, if you have any ideas or suggestions, send them over. And enjoy the full spectrum of your desktop.

The OSI would like to thank all of those who ran for the Board. Volunteering to serve the OSI and support the Open Source community is a tremendous commitment in time and energy--we truly appreciate their willingness to contribute to our continued success and participate in our ongoing work to promote and protect open source software, communities, and development as well as the ideals and ethos inherent to the open source movement.

Australia's first data breach since the country introduced a data breach notification law has been recorded, with the Danish shipping company Svitzer suffering a breach that affected about half of its 1000 employees.

Banks, energy and water companies are on maximum alert over the threat of a serious cyber-attack from Moscow as concern continues over the safety of Russian exiles in the UK.

Fears that Russia will target Britain’s critical national infrastructure have prompted round-the-clock threat assessments by the UK’s financial sector, energy firms and GCHQ, the UK’s largest intelligence agency, along with the security services MI5 and MI6.

The Bank of England, major financiers, including Lloyds, and organisations such as Water UK are working with the government’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to assess the next move from Moscow following the murder of Nikolai Glushkov, 68, and the Salisbury chemical attack.

For those who can't get enough shoot 'em up action, Dark Old Sun [Steam] recently added Linux support and it looks pretty varied. It originally released on March 8th, with Linux support arriving only a few days later on the 16th.

It has three different game modes: An Arcade/Story mode with 6 different stages, a Challenge mode and a Survival mode where you face off against waves of enemies and random events.

I know, a bunch of you are probably already running away due to it being browser-based, but I find that really quite interesting. surviv.io is actually not bad at all. Basic of course, since it's a top-down 2D game that runs directly in the browser, but that's also what makes it so interesting. You can play it on basically anything and if you want to team up with someone, it generates a link for you to send them and away you go. You can also play with strangers on a team as well, which also works surprisingly well with the simple emotes system to give them a thumbs up, or a sad face.

Fresh off the release of Wine 3.4 on Friday, the maintainers corralling the Wine-Staging releases have now put out their second modern release.

Wine-Staging 3.4 was released minutes ago since Alistair Leslie-Hughes managed to take-over the Wine-Staging maintenance and get out the recent v3.3 release. They have continued re-basing their patches against Wine upstream, more than 1000 in total. They are also working to upstream those patches where appropriate.

The OSCAL organizers have given a reminder about their call for papers, booths and sponsors (ask questions here). The deadline is imminent but you may not be too late.

OSCAL is the Open Source Conference of Albania. OSCAL attracts visitors from far beyond Albania (OpenStreetmap), as the biggest Free Software conference in the Balkans, people come from many neighboring countries including Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece and Italy. OSCAL has a unique character unlike any other event I've visited in Europe and many international guests keep returning every year.

This year was the 4th year that I attended Campus Party, and with butterflies, in my belly, I went over there to show Atelier and do two talks: One about Qt and one about Free Software.

We are working on AtCore and Atelier since 2016, and on the couple weeks of January, we made the first release of AtCore. That triggered a lot of feelings. And with the good part of those feelings, I made some partnerships(To get a 3DPrinter and material) and went to Campus Party to show our work.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) voted on March 14 to accept the NATS messaging project as its newest hosted effort.

The NATS project is an open-source distributed messaging technology that got its start seven years ago and has already been deployed by multiple organizations including Ericsson, Comcast, Samsung and General Electric (GE).

"NATS has room to grow as cloud native adds more use cases and grows adoption, driven by Kubernetes and containers," Alexis Richardson, Chair of the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) at the CNCF told eWEEK. "CNCF provides a way to scale community and education so that adopters can engage faster and at all levels."

On Friday, Microsoft released the new Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17263 for Skip Ahead users. As you might be knowing, the changes and improvements pushed as a part of the build will be included in the semi-annual Windows 10 feature update (codenamed Redstone 5) releasing in the second half of 2018.

Between 2010 and 2016, women in technical jobs at the company lodged 108 complaints of sexual harassment, 119 complaints of gender discrimination, eight complaints of retaliation and three complaints of pregnancy discrimination.

In the end, it seems that while the eight architectures are extremely
different, they all suffered the same fate: There was one company in
charge of an SoC line, a CPU microarchitecture and a software ecosystem,
which was more costly than licensing newer off-the-shelf CPU cores from
a third party (typically ARM, MIPS, or RISC-V). It seems that all the
SoC product lines are still around, but have not used the custom CPU
architectures for several years at this point.

As it's been a few weeks since last delivering a modest Linux GPU comparison and given the continuously evolving state of the Linux kernel Git tree as well as the Mesa project that houses the RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan drivers, here are our latest benchmarks showing the current state of the AMD Radeon open-source Linux graphics driver performance relative to NVIDIA's long-standing and high-performance but proprietary driver using several different graphics cards.

AMD And CTS Labs: A Story Of Failed Stock Manipulation

We have attempted to contact Jessica Schaefer from Bevel PR, the listed PR firm on the vulnerability disclosure website, only to be greeted by a full voicemail inbox. We attempted to contact both Bevel PR and CTS Labs by email and inquire about the relationship between CTS and Viceroy, and provided them with ample time to respond. They did not respond to our inquiry.
So, let's look at Viceroy Research. According to MoneyWeb, Viceroy Research is headed by a 44-year-old British citizen and ex-social worker, John Fraser Perring, in conjunction with two 23-year-old Australian citizens, Gabriel Bernarde and Aidan Lau. I wonder which of these guys is so fast at typing. Viceroy Research was the group responsible for the uncovering of the Steinhoff accounting scandal, about which you can read more here.
After successfully taking down Steinhoff, it tried to manufacture controversy around Capitec Bank, a fast-growing South African bank. This time it didn't work out so well. The Capitec stock price dropped shortly and quickly recovered when the South African reserve bank made a statement that Capitec's business is sound. Just a week ago Viceroy attempted to do the same thing with a German company called ProSieben, also with mixed success, and in alleged breach of German securities laws, according to BaFin (similar to the SEC).
Now, it appears it is going after AMD, though it looks to be another unsuccessful attack.
Investor Takeaway
After the announcement of this news, AMD stock generally traded sideways with slight downward movement, not uncommon for AMD in general. Hopefully this article showed you that CTS's report is largely nonsense and a fabrication with perhaps a small kernel of truth hidden somewhere in the middle. If the vulnerabilities are confirmed by AMD, they are likely to be easily fixed by software patches. If you are long AMD, stay long. If you are looking for an entry point, this might be a good opportunity to use this fake news to your advantage. AMD is a company with a bright future if it continues to execute well, and we see it hitting $20 per share by the end of 2018.

The Firefox Snap package appears to be maintained by Mozilla, which allows Linux users to test drive the latest features of their Quantum browser on multiple GNU/Linux distributions that support Canonical's Snappy universal binary format.
Developed by Canonical, the Snap universal application packaging format for Linux lets Linux users enjoy the most recent release of a software product as soon as it's released upstream. It's secure by design and works natively on multiple popular Linux OSes.